Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Saudi Now is an independent app that brings your day into one place: weather and prayer times, news, football, the Holy Quran, and everyday tools. It is not affiliated with any government or official body.

2. Data stored only on your device

• Preferences: city, language, interests, followed clubs, home layout, notification settings.
• Quran: last reading position, bookmarks, font size, khatma plan, chosen reciter and riwaya, surahs saved for offline reading.
• Worship: prayer log, tasbeeh counter, Umrah guide progress.
• Tools: budget and expenses, documents and expiry dates, car log, jam'iya and debts, predictions, saved articles.
• Temporary copies of news, matches and images so the app opens fast and works offline.

You can erase all of it at any time from your phone's settings (Apps → Saudi Now → Storage → Clear data) or by uninstalling the app.

2a. Your account (optional)

• You can sign in with Google or with an email and password, through Google's Firebase Authentication. We keep your name, email address, Google profile photo (if any) and account ID. We never see your password; Firebase stores it hashed.
• Signed in, a copy of your settings, saved items and tools data (budget and expenses, documents and their dates, car log, jam'iya and debts, prayer log, khatma, tasbeeh…) is stored in Google's Cloud Firestore, in a record only your account can reach, so it comes back on a new phone.
• Your email is never used for marketing, only to sign in, reset your password and confirm the address.
• Deleting your account: in the app (Account → Delete account) your account and its backup are deleted immediately and permanently. You can also request deletion without the app on the account deletion page.

2b. Data collected by Google services

We never send these services your name, email, phone number, location coordinates or anything you type into the tools. Data travels encrypted and Google keeps it for its own retention periods (for example 14 months for Analytics and 90 days for crash reports).

3. Location

• We ask for your approximate (coarse) location once, only to suggest your nearest city. You can decline and pick a city yourself.
• We do not track your location in the background, and we do not store or share your coordinates. Only the chosen city name is saved.
• Weather and prayer times use the city's coordinates, not your phone's.

4. Notifications

Prayer, match, document and date reminders are scheduled on your device (local notifications). Breaking news and important announcements arrive through Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging, using a device push token that carries no name. Notifications need your permission and can be turned off in the app or in your phone's settings.

5. External sources the app connects to

To show content, the app requests public data from the services below. These requests carry no name or personal identifier, but the receiving service sees your IP address and device type as any website does, under its own privacy policy: Open-Meteo (weather; receives the city's coordinates), gold-api.com and open.er-api.com (gold and currency), Saudi papers (Okaz, Al-Madina, Al-Watan, Al-Jazirah, Al-Bilad, Al-Weeam, Arriyadiyah, Saudi Gazette), Arab and international outlets such as Asharq Al-Awsat, Independent Arabia, CNN Arabic and BBC, and English, Hindi, Urdu and Bengali papers for your language (news; the publisher's page is read when you open a story), Google's favicon service (receives only a paper's website name, to show its logo), public sports data providers, TheSportsDB and Wikipedia (football and profiles), YouTube (official channel feeds; videos open in the YouTube app), alquran.cloud (Quran text) and mp3quran.net (recitations and ayah timing).

5a. The in-app browser

• The app includes a browser that blocks ads, popups and trackers on the sites you open. Pages load straight from their sites and never pass through us.
• Browsing history, bookmarks, the "continue watching" list and downloads are kept on your phone only and are never sent to us or anyone else. "Clear cookies and data" in the browser menu erases the history, the watch list and cookies; bookmarks and downloads are deleted from their own pages, and clearing the app's data erases everything.
• Private tabs use a separate profile that is erased once the private tabs are closed.
• The browser does not block YouTube's ads and does not download videos; it only saves files a site itself offers for download, or a picture you choose to save.
• The sites you visit have their own privacy policies and see your IP address, as with any browser.

6. Advertising

The app shows ads from Google AdMob, labelled "Ad". Google, as the ad network, collects your device's advertising ID, IP address and device information to serve ads (which may be personalised), measure them and prevent fraud, under Google's policy. Where the law requires your consent (such as the EEA and the UK), Google's consent message is shown before any ad, and you can change your choice from the Privacy page in the app. You can reset or delete your advertising ID, or opt out of personalised ads, in your phone's settings (Google → Ads).

7. What we don't do

• We don't sell or rent your data.
• We don't share your data with data brokers. The only sharing is with Google for analytics, crash reports, notifications and ads, as described above.
• We don't ask for your name or email unless you choose to create an account, and we never ask for your phone number.
• We don't access your photos, contacts, microphone or camera.

8. Security

Connections to external sources and Google services use encrypted HTTPS. Your data is kept in the app's private storage on your device, protected by Android.

9. Children

The app is for a general audience and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children.

10. Changes

If the way we handle data changes, we will update this page and the effective date above.

To delete data Google holds for your device: uninstall the app and reset your advertising ID, or email us below and we will request its deletion from Firebase. To delete your account, see the account deletion page.

11. Contact

For any privacy question: mahmoudalimohamedali1@gmail.com